With his third film, “Chappie,” South African-born filmmaker Neill Blomkamp has honed the double-edged sword of his career to a sharp and gleaming edge that wounds his own film.
It’s easy to be carried away by the kineticism and the filmmaking in “Chappie,” as robots and humans engage in pitched gun battles between themselves and each other. It’s also easy to recognize that Blomkamp’s films, each set in near-future riffs on our own society, now represent a groove that is stuck in a rut.
Following “District 9” and “Elysium,” “Chappie” continues Blomkamp’s trend of telling effects-heavy stories about dispossessed underdogs set up to challenge a high-tech corporate state; a box set of these films could accurately and easily be summarized with the title “Fight the Power (in a Motion-Capture Suit).”